In the beginning, there were only three. And emptiness around them.

  The first was the Creator (the Father). He was Light and Order.

  The second was Darkness. He was that very “being beyond cold.” Silent, eternally displeased, he stood at the left hand, and from him flowed the absolute calm of a frozen cosmos. (The Father would exile him later, but that is another story.)

  The third was Death. And he was… breathtaking.

  He wore no hood, did not rattle bones. He looked like a tall man with a dazzling smile that made your soul feel light. Beside him, you wanted to laugh, forget your worries, and simply… fall asleep forever. Happy.

  The Father gathered all of us—five Higher Archangels—before his throne. We were perfect. Our wings shimmered like the morning sky.

  The Father pointed to a sphere in the center of the hall—Earth.

  “I have populated this world,” said the Father, and his voice rang with pride. “The elves received forests and magic. The dwarves—the depths and perseverance. The titans—strength. The demons—passion.”

  “And what about humans?” Death asked, winking at me (I stood at the far end). “Did you save the smallest for last?”

  The Father nodded.

  “Humans. They will be weak. They have neither the elves’ magic nor the titans’ skin. And they will live little. On average, sixty years.”

  Silence fell in the hall.

  Darkness snorted. The sound was like a glacier cracking.

  “Sixty?” he repeated. “Brother, they won’t even have time to understand who they are before they die. That is cruel even for me. Give them at least three hundred, like the dwarves.”

  Death laughed, clapping his hands. The sound was bright, like a song.

  “Oh, Darkness, you’re so boring! Sixty is wonderful!” Death smiled so widely that I smiled without meaning to. “Imagine the pace! They will have to hurry—love, hate, build and break—and all of it at a run! Life will burn in them like gunpowder!”

  The Father nodded at Death.

  “Exactly. I did not give them strength—I gave them Curiosity. They will search for meanings where others simply live. They will kindle fire in other peoples.”

  Death stretched, pleased.

  “I already like them. There will be a lot of work—but fun work.”

  “Step onto Earth,” the Father said to the humans (to their souls), sending them down. “Show me what you are capable of.”

  We, the Archangels, only watched. We thought it was the beginning of something great.

  Chapter 1: The Father’s Disappointment

  Thousands of years passed.

  For us it was like a couple of days. We watched.

  At first everything went exactly as Death had said. Humans were bright. They built settlements faster than elves planted trees. They invented the wheel while dwarves were still only learning to chip stone.

  But then… something went wrong.

  Curiosity turned into greed.

  Weakness turned into cruelty.

  Humans began killing elves for their lands. They deceived dwarves. They sacrificed their own children to demons to gain a little more power. They forgot the Father. They forgot the light.

  The Father sat on his throne, and his radiance dimmed. He was not angry. No—this was worse. He was sad.

  He watched humans poison rivers. Watched them betray each other for shining stones.

  “They have become corrupted,” the Father said quietly.

  Death stopped smiling. He stood nearby, arms crossed.

  “They are simply confused, brother,” Death said gently. “Give them time.”

  “I gave them time,” the Father’s voice hardened. “They infect the others. Elves have grown cruel defending themselves from them. Dwarves have grown greedy. Humans are a disease.”

  The Father stood.

  “It is time to begin treatment. If the medicine is bitter—so be it.”

  He looked at us, his nine children. At the Archangels.

  “First Son,” he called.

  My elder brother, Zariil, stepped forward. He was beautiful, with silver hair and eyes the color of a clear sky. He never wanted to kill anyone. He loved silence.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “Go down to them. Cool their fervor. Let cold remind them how important the warmth of one another is. Perhaps in the face of an eternal winter they will remember what it means to be human.”

  Zariil went pale.

  “You want… me to freeze them?”

  “I want you to cleanse the world. Go.”

  Zariil did not want to be an executioner.

  When he descended to Earth, he wept. And his tears turned into hail the size of a fist.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered, beating his snow-white wings.

  The wind howled. The temperature plummeted.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The Ice Age began.

  Oceans locked solid. Green forests became glass statues.

  Zariil hoped humans would repent. That they would beg the heavens.

  But humans…

  They surprised everyone.

  Instead of praying, they began killing beasts and wearing their hides. They began burning forests to keep warm. They became even angrier. Cold did not cleanse them—it made their hearts icy.

  Zariil saw it. He wandered the snowy wasteland, trying to stop the storm, but the Father’s order bound his will.

  A century passed.

  The Father looked down. Humans survived. Dwarves survived. But they did not improve. They became only worse—angrier and harder.

  “You failed,” said the Father. His voice was calm, but in it sounded a sentence.

  Zariil returned to the heavens, trembling from the cold he himself had created.

  “Father, I could not kill them… they want to live too much.”

  “You showed weakness,” said the Father. “You pitied them as you froze them.”

  The Father flicked his hand.

  Zariil’s wings blackened and crumbled into ash.

  He screamed, falling from the heavens. The first Fallen.

  Death watched him go, and for the first time in an eternity there was sorrow in his eyes.

  “One down,” Darkness said quietly.

  The Father turned to us.

  “Ignis. Your turn.” He looked at the Second Son.

  My second brother, Ignis, was a warrior. He nodded, clenching fists that smoked. He thought he would not let the Father down.

  He descended, and the mountains trembled…

  Ignis struck the earth like a meteor. Unlike Zariil, he did not cry. He was a warrior and wanted to prove he was better than his brother.

  “Burn,” he commanded.

  The ground split. Hundreds of volcanoes, asleep for millions of years, opened their fiery maws. The sky turned black with ash; day became night, lit only by crimson rivers of lava. Zariil’s glaciers melted, becoming boiling torrents of mud.

  Ignis expected humans to burn. To vanish.

  But humans… They drove themselves into caves. They learned to breathe through wet rags so the ash would not scorch their lungs. They took cooling lava and made weapons from it, sharper than steel. Fire did not cleanse them. It forged warriors out of them—cruel, soot-blackened, ready to tear a throat out for a mouthful of water.

  Ignis returned to the Father, covered in soot. He breathed hard.

  “I burned their cities, Father. I turned their gardens into deserts.”

  The Father looked down through the clouds of smoke.

  “You gave them weapons, son. Now they are not merely evil. They are killers. You failed as well.”

  Ignis wanted to argue, but the Father only moved a finger. Ignis crashed downward, back to his volcanoes, to boil forever in the rage he himself had awakened.

  “Third,” the Father said without looking at us. “Famine. Your turn. Let the earth stop bearing fruit. Let them devour one another.”

  “Enough!”

  The voice rang like a thunderclap in a winter night. It was not an angel. It was Darkness.

  He stepped forward, shielding the Third Son. His dark, calm figure for the first time seemed not frightening, but reliable.

  “You are making a mistake, Brother,” Darkness said. “You are breaking your toys because they do not play by your rules.”

  “Step aside,” the Father’s voice was calm, but the throne beneath him began to glow white-hot. “You did not create them. You have no right to judge.”

  “I see darkness,” Darkness answered. “And what you are doing breeds more darkness in them than there was at the beginning. You are turning them into monsters to prove yourself right!”

  The Father rose. The light around him became unbearable, scorching.

  “You dare teach me? You who are only the shadow of my light?”

  “Better a shadow than blind light!” Darkness shouted.

  The Father lifted his hand, gathering pure creative energy that would have ground Darkness into dust.

  And then I intervened.

  I—his beloved daughter, Lucida—ran forward and stood beside Darkness.

  “Father, no!” I cried. “Uncle is right! Look at them! They suffer, but they live! Maybe that is the meaning—to live in spite of everything?”

  “And you?” The Father froze. His gaze shifted to me. There was no love in it. Only cold calculation. “My radiance… it dims because of you, daughter. You mix my Light with his Darkness.”

  Death stood aside. He did not smile. He rested a hand on the hilt of an invisible sword, ready to defend us—but the Father was faster.

  “Since you love their darkness so much, brother,” the Father’s voice thundered, and the very heavens shook, “then go and look upon it forever!”

  The Father tore the fabric of reality. Below, under the earth, an abyss formed. Empty, terrifying, yet ready to take all the world’s evil.

  “I create a place for their rotten souls. Hell. And you will be their jailer!”

  A blow of Light hurled Darkness away. He did not fall—he was simply swept into that new abyss.

  “I will wait for them!” Darkness shouted, vanishing into the dark. “And I will be fairer than you!”

  The Father turned to me.

  The hall went silent. The other archangel brothers lowered their heads, afraid to look at him.

  “And you…” the Father whispered, approaching me.

  I did not step back. I looked him in the eyes.

  “You went against the will of the Creator. You defended Darkness.”

  “I defended justice!” I blurted.

  “Justice is Me!” he roared.

  He seized my shoulders. His fingers burned.

  “You are no longer my radiance. You are corruption.”

  He grabbed my wings—my beautiful, shimmering wings.

  “Father, no…” I whispered, understanding what would happen. “NO!”

  A yank. The pain was as if my soul were being ripped out. Bones cracked and light tore.

  I screamed, and that scream was likely heard even by humans on Earth.

  He tore them off. Threw my bloodied feathers onto the floor.

  “Out,” he said. “Fall—first of those who remain. Let them tear you apart. Let you see all the horrors you were so eager to defend.”

  He shoved me.

  And I flew downward—past Ignis’s ash clouds, past Zariil’s glaciers.

  I fell, bleeding golden blood into a world that hated the heavens.

  I fell, knowing I was no longer an angel.

  I was Fallen.

  And I was alone.

  The impact knocked the breath out of me, but it did not kill me. I opened my eyes. The sky was gray, choked with smoke. My back burned as if I were still being torn apart.

  I tried to roll over and screamed.

  From my shoulder blades, where my wings had been, Light burst out in pulses. It was not the red blood of mortals, but a thick, gold-glowing substance—my divine essence, leaking into the mud.

  “Help…” I whispered, seeing shadows.

  They came out from behind the rocks. Creatures wrapped in ragged hides, with filthy, twisted faces.

  Humans.

  The very ones I had defended.

  Their eyes did not burn with gratitude, but with greed. They saw the Light flowing from me.

  “Magic…” one rasped, gripping a sharpened stone.

  “Kill her, drink the power,” another answered, drawing a bone knife.

  “No!” I screamed, trying to crawl away. “I am your protector! I—”

  A knife blow cut me off. The blade sank into my shoulder. The pain was blinding. I, an Archangel, had never known physical pain.

  The second struck my leg with a stone.

  The third was already reaching for the wounds on my back to scoop the shining blood into a filthy palm.

  I screamed. It was not only pain, but horror and betrayal.

  And then—SILENCE.

  The world flashed white. Not warm light, but cold, sterile fire.

  When I opened my eyes a second later, the humans were gone.

  Around me lay only little heaps of gray ash, slowly carried away by the wind. Knives and stones fell to the ground, smoking.

  The Father’s voice sounded not from the heavens, but directly inside my head. It was disgusted.

  “I cannot listen to your horrible screams, my daughter. They disturb the peace of Heaven.”

  I lay there, staring into emptiness.

  He killed them. Not for me. For his comfort.

  “But I cannot forgive you either. You wanted to be with them? You wanted to share their fate? Then be here. But death will not be your way out.”

  I felt burning.

  The Light flowing from my back suddenly stopped. The wounds began to close with frightening speed. Skin knit, muscles wove themselves anew. Even the knife mark on my shoulder vanished.

  Only two ugly, knotted scars remained on my shoulder blades—a memory of what I had been.

  “I grant you immortality. You will live forever on this cursed earth until it withers. Suffer with them.”

  The voice fell silent. The Father’s presence vanished. I was alone amid ash.

  At first I wept. But the tears dried quickly. I ran a hand over the scars. There was no pain anymore. Only anger. Cold, heavy fury.

  “You think this is punishment?” I whispered to the gray sky. “You think I will simply suffer?”

  I stood. My feet planted firmly in the earth. I was naked, smeared with mud and my own golden blood, but I felt strength. Eternal life boiling in my veins.

  I looked around.

  To the north, the horizon was white with eternal ice. Zariil was there.

  To the east, the sky burned with the crimson glow of volcanoes. Ignis was there.

  “I will find you, brothers,” I said. “We are this world’s refuse. But now there are three of us. And we will remind the Father why you do not throw your children away.”

  I picked up the bone knife left by the human who had wanted to kill me.

  My path began.